


Don't Cry

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [28]
Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Angst, Funeral, Grief, pow right in the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:45:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6014764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaire, Freeze, and the Sirens lay Jay to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Cry

**Author's Note:**

> [TW: funeral, grief] Again, poor fucking Blaire. That’s all I’ve got for this one. This was actually harder to write than the last chapter for me. The next couple of chapters are shorter ones, but I felt they needed to be separate for some reason, different moods I guess.
> 
> Musical inspiration is Don’t Cry by Guns N’ Roses

Over the next three days I spend most of my time swinging violently between rage, numbness, and self loathing so deep I sometimes feel like it might actually kill me. I’m fielding questions from Pam and Selina left right and centre: where are we gonna bury him? Are we gonna bury him? Do you want Freeze to do an autopsy? Did he have any family? Just so many details I don’t have the patience or the emotional wherewithal to deal with right now, if ever.

“Girls! C’mon, let her have some space!” Harley says, shooing them off, then she perches herself next to me on the end of the bed where I’m sitting staring into space.

“In my family crypt, there’s a slot, coffin and all. Empty coffin. It’s got my name on it so I figure it’s mine to do with as I see fit, right?” I pose the rhetorical question to her, still not averting my eyes from the brickwork.

“Well…I guess so…” she mumbles, snaking her arm around my shoulders.

“We’ll put him there. Nobody will be any the wiser.”

I get up and walk over to the dresser in the corner, pulling open a drawer, staring at his collection of ties. I run my fingers over the silk and a shiver runs all the way down my spine and through my entire being.

“Blaire?” Harley calls out softly; apparently it was a visible shiver. “Kid, why don’t ya let me do that, huh?”

I ignore her and pull out my favourite, the close the door and march over to the closet, tossing it to her on my way past.

“Blaire?”

“Harley, just let me do this okay!” I snap. “Just…let me…I picked out my mum’s dress, and I’m gonna pick out his fucking shirt, now just…let me do it. Please.”

The only two people I’ve ever truly loved, and they were both snatched away from me. I need to take control and do this. Just this one thing. I need to feel like I still have a say in fucking something. She stands and heaves a sigh, before taking her leave.

“If you insist, kid. I’ll be out here with the others if you need me, okay?”

I nod at her and go back to staring into the closet. The door clicks shut behind her and I last approximately three seconds before sinking to my knees. My mouth falls open in a silent scream, and tears well in my eyes.

It’s the scent. I open that door and it hits me like brass knuckles to the face. That intoxicating blend of leather, silver, gunpowder, and cigarettes. No matter how many times I washed his clothes, it never came out. Suddenly it’s like he’s all around me, here but not, all at once.

I reach up and tug on the sleeve of a black shirt. Then his favourite purple jeans – the ones I had mended for him after I so thoroughly destroyed them that time. I look up then and see his trench coat, the one he wore everywhere, the one that’s so singularly him. The one I’ve patched up time and time again to the point it looks like the guy from Jeepers Creepers made it. I can’t part with it. I won’t.

I take the deep purple palecot overcoat with the crocodile leather lapels instead, gather up the tie from the bed, and pull myself together before going out to face the girls.

“Here, give me those, kid. I’ll run them over to Freeze’s. We’ll meet you there,” Selina says. Forever the pragmatist. I nod at her and do as I’m bid, then retreat back to the bedroom to get dressed; not that I think Jay would mind me wearing his t-shirt and my underwear, but it’s wet and cold out, and it’s probably frowned upon attire for a cemetery.

I take out the dress he gave me, and put it on. I don’t care if it’s my ‘work dress,’ he gave it to me and I’m fucking wearing it. I pull on a pair of lace stockings and a cropped leather jacket. I’m sitting on the end of the bed, pulling on my lucky Chucks when Pam speaks.

“Blaire?” she starts.

“What do you want? Here to gloat?” I spit at her. She always hated him, and I’m sure she hates me just for loving him. Why is she even here?

“I want to apologise,” she says with contrition, and I look up at her in disbelief. “I mean it. Look…I know I did some things, said some things…and yeah, I hated the guy, but can you blame me? Harley still wakes up in the night screaming and I’m the one who’s picking up the pieces of the mess he made, years later.”

“Pamela, I swear to God if you don’t get to the point there’s gonna be two funerals tonight,” I growl.

“Sorry, I just…If that happened to me, if Harley was just suddenly there one minute and gone the next…Blaire, I know we’ve had our differences, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t even wish it was him sitting there right now, going through all this instead of you.”

I look up and into those big green eyes and I can see the sincerity in them. I can see those words weren’t easy for her to say, but that she cares enough to say them. I thought Harley put her up to it, but no, this is coming from her.

“Thank you,” is all I can manage.

“Are you ready?” she asks me, face somber as I’ve ever seen it.

“No, but I’m dressed. That’s probably as close as I’m ever gonna get,” I tell her, standing up and making for the door.

Harley refuses to let me ride, and I don’t have the energy to argue, so the three of us pile in Pam’s car and make our way to the cemetery. I lead the way through the darkness and the pouring rain to the old crypt.

“Why you wearin’ those shoes, kid? They got holes built in ‘em!” Harley asks when she hears me swear under my breath as we step in a puddle. I shoot her a sad smile but don’t answer. It’s because these were the reason I told him I’d see him again. I told him I’d always come back for these grubby, old, black sneakers.

Selina and Freeze are already inside waiting. Harley and Pam head in before me, and I go to follow them in, but when I get to the threshold I stop. I’m frozen. I can’t do it.

All I can feel is the horrific weight of the place, the memories, the pain, it comes crashing down on me like a grand piano made of marble, and I cant move. I can’t hear. I can’t breathe. I can see them looking at me, confused, expectant, waiting. It’s Harley’s hand on my arm that rips me from my reverie.

“Kid? You okay?”

I stare at her for a moment like a deer caught in the headlights, before nodding slowly, my left foot finally managing to move in front of my right and I step in from the rain.

Once I’m in there it’s like they’re not. They’ve got him on the slab in the centre, in some high tech coffin Freeze built. It’s all glass and steel and blue lights. Apparently it’s some kind of cryogenic contraption, I don’t know I wasn’t listening when he told me about it. Long story short, Jay didn’t fit in the one they’d gotten for me all those years ago, so we had to come up with something else.

“Why don’t we give her a minute, guys,” I hear Selina suggest, but it sounds like she’s far away, in an abstract place that I’m not entirely sure even exists.

I step closer, right up to him, staring down as every little memory plays in the back of my mind on loop. Everything, the fucking, the fighting, the laughter, the killing; every word and every touch, just replaying over and over.

And he’s still got it, that uneasy innocence. He really looks like he could be asleep.

I crouch down and unlace my high tops, take them off, then tie them together neatly. I hesitate a moment before lifting his hand and tucking them under his arm. Then I bend down to gingerly kiss his cold lips, lingering there long enough that it’s almost as if I’m waiting for that old Disney cliché of true love’s kiss to work it’s magic. But life isn’t a Disney movie, kids, and even if it was, I’m a villain; I don’t get the happily ever after.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll be back…” I whisper, “you’ve got my lucky Chucks, and you know I can’t…you know I can’t live without my lucky Chucks…”

I kiss him one last time, then step back, closing the heavy glass lid before looking to the others and nodding. They each either pat my arm or hug me as they come back in, and after Freeze has sealed the casket, the five of us lift it into the slot with my name on it, sliding it in and thanking our lucky stars it fits. I swing the old iron door shut, and lock it with the key I lifted from my father’s house, which I then loop onto the black leather cord around my neck, along with the old shark’s tooth from all those years ago, and my mother’s locket.

“Let’s go,” I tell them.

“You…don’t want to say anything?” Freeze asks, and I just shake my head, clutching the key in my hand. I turn on my heel and walk out into the pouring rain, pausing only to place a kiss on my fingers and then to my mother’s hatch on my way past; the only two people I’ve ever really loved are now eternal neighbours.

At least nobody can hurt them now.

Or me; I’ve got nothing left to lose.


End file.
